A More Perfect Union: The Reading of the Constitution

I'm a sucker for pomp and circumstance, so I thought the decision to open the 112th Congress with the reading of the Constitution was a pretty nice touch. Of course, that was before I realized that they were only going to read it as it has been amended. It would have been a great historical event had they read the Constitution in its entirety, showing this Nation's attempt to truly be "a more perfect Union".

Reading the original Constitution with the inclusion of all 27 amendments would have been a prime opportunity for Tea Partiers, and so-called pure constitutionalists, to acknowledge that our Constitution, has sometimes been unjust, imperfect, and even vague. It would have given some context to what was going on in the minds of the founders at the time of the framing of our Constitution. But just like the framers, who made very conscious decisions that some issues where just too controversial to include in the framework of our government, Congress showed us once that it lacked "a pair" to do the right thing.

One might argue that reading the Constitution as it is today, the historical framework of the document itself was lost. Congress had the opportunity to read a document that allowed for the taxation and representation of the whole number of free Persons plus 3/5 of everybody else, except Indians. Some folks might have even learned that voting was a right provided you were the right color or gender. Or that prohibition ruled the day at one time in our history. The reading of the entire document would have shown at least some evidence of a government, a country, that recognizes the need to become a more perfect union with the ratification of laws that truly seek to establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.

But, like Bob McDonnel, China, and Five Ponds Press the 112th Congress chose the majority chose to seize an all important opportunity to white-wash history for their own political gains. Shame on you!

A word of warning! Just because you remove the word"nigger" from a literary work, doesn't mean that one of America's literary icons never said it, wrote it, or meant it. Some of us read, have, or have access to the original.